driving me crazy

in the news
on the home front
is the buzz about increasing gas tax
and fool that i am i made the mistake of reading
the globe's readers' comments about it

oh no

oh yes

i can't stay away from garbage like this

"I live in rural western massachusetts don't travel greater
boston's
roadways and don't plan to
and I don't want to pay
a single penny for boston's boondoggles
those projects should be paid for by the people who use them"

well let's have some fun with that last statement

take for instance route 9 in wellesley and natick
now being from western massachusetts
which apart from being in the devil state
is almost like the real america
our friend above almost certainly doesn't drive on it
say 100000 people a day drive on it
maybe out by them
10000 people a day drive on route 2 in williamstown

even if it costs twice as much to fix the potholes on route 9
and it might
it's still serving a great deal more people to do that
it's like how every time you buy a plane ticket from boston to atlanta
you're paying a little bit for flying to idaho falls
not because you're going there
but because someday you might want to
it's part of a system

and this insular western massachusetts citizen
would like to cut off their roads from us wasteful city dwellers
but we pay a disproportionate amount for those roads
just as they pay a disproportionate amount for our roads
and trains and bridges and tunnels
which we use to get around so that we can bribe each other
hire family members at high wages
sit around and collect pensions
and twirl our mustaches while raising your taxes

the job of transportation in the state is to keep everything moving
it is inherently a network
if boston didn't keep moving
then we for damn sure wouldn't give a crap
about getting from great barrington to willamstown

fact of the matter is
this costs money
and even though a gas tax causes an almost tangible
mental link between your car
the gas in it
and the road it's on
it doesn't stop there